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You can't buy a hybrid cloud as a product nor as a service, and even if you could you would need to customise it for your unique requirements and constraints. The reality today is you need to buy the ingredients from a supplier then roll your own hybrid cloud and to manage this you need to put in place a Hybrid Cloud Manifesto.

The SPC-2 benchmark is a useful benchmark for bandwidth intensive sequential workloads, such as backup, ETL (extraction, translate, load) and large-scale analytics. Wikibon does a deep comparative analysis of the SPC-2 results, time-adjusting the pricing information to correct for different publication dates. Wikibon then analyses performance and price-performance together, and develops a guide to enable practitioners to understand the business options and best strategic fit. Wikibon concludes the Oracle ZS4-4 storage appliance dominates this high-bandwidth processing as of the best combination of good performance and great price performance at the high-end and mid-range of this market.

The thesis of the overall Wikibon research in this area is that within 2 years, the majority of IT installations will be moving to combine workloads together to share data using NAND flash as the only active storage media. This will save on IT budget and improve IT productivity, especially in the IT development function. Our research shows that these changes have the potential to reduce the typical IT budget by 34% over a five year period while delivering the same functionality to the business. The projected IT savings of moving to a shared-data all-flash datacenter for an organization with a $40M IT budget are $38M over 5 years, with an IRR of 246%, an annual ROI of 542%, and a breakeven of 13 months. Future research will look at the potential to maximize the contribution of IT to the business, and will conclude that IT budgets should increase to deliver historic improvements in internal productivity and increased business potential.

The Public Cloud market is still forming – but seems to be poised to soon enter the Early Majority stage of its development where user behavior, preferences, and strategies become more stable. Large enterprises are more discerning of Public Cloud IaaS offerings. Test and development appears to be a key entry point for them since scale, operational complexity, and security/compliance/regulatory demands require a more nuanced approach to Public Cloud for IaaS. Small and Medium enterprises have the greatest need for Public Cloud and should consider well-established, lower risk entry points to Public Cloud like SaaS, Email, and Web Applications before venturing into Mission Critical and IaaS workloads to help them navigate an increasingly complex and costly IT infrastructure environment.

Breaking Analysis: Has Windows 8 Turned the Tables – Is Mac the New “Old School” PC?

A survey shows that Windows users are not rushing to do Windows 8 upgrades – what’s slowing them down? An antivirus company called Avast has released results from a survey they conducted of Windows PC users. Findings show that most Windows users in the U.S. know about Windows 8 but few have immediate plans to upgrade to Microsoft’s newest operating system.

SiliconANGLE Contributing Editor John Casaretto attributes this to several factors. Since the survey was done a day before the Windows 8 launch, Casaretto says it’s important to note many of the survey participants had not actually touched or used Windows 8 at the time of the survey. He also reminded viewers that the economy is still in a recession, and with plenty of Windows devices running well on Windows 7, users may not see a need to upgrade right away. He believes another reason could be that consumers still covet their beloved iPads.

For consumers who have been exposed to Windows 8, it seems as though the Metro interface is a concern in having to re-learn an operating system. Casaretto commented on Microsoft’s strategy saying, “I think What they’re trying to do is get [the product] in people’s hands and get them accustomed to it.”

The survey indicated that 42% of Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP users who are ready to buy a new PC intend to switch to an Apple product. Could the reluctance of this group to lose the keyboard and mouse components and transition to that touch interface be turning the tables and making Mac the new “old school” PC? Casaretto acknowledged there’s a shift in the market, but disagreed that the tables have turned completely.

It seems as though consumers are more willing to try Windows 8 out on a mobile device versus a traditional PC. Casaretto agreed, stating that “People are looking at Windows 8 as a mobile platform.” He said Microsoft has some work to do in getting the word out to try Windows 8 and proceed from there. See the entire segment with Kristin Feledy and John Casaretto on the Morning NewsDesk Show.